Images Emerging from Vials. A Study of the Pictorial Language of Alchemy in the Early Modern Period

炼金术的两种绘画类型是该项目的中心：（a）在印刷机发明的同时，印刷的炼金术书籍开始包括卷首插图。作为广受欢迎的纲领性声明，卷首插图表明了书的内容，并试图唤起人们的兴趣。(b)炼金术的绘画语言集中在小瓶的生动形象上，小瓶作为一个方便的转化阶段。在调查的第一个领域，重点是炼金术知识的外在表现，而在第二个炼金术理论和实践的核心领域的标志性潜力进行了探索。虽然插图标题页通常是技术复制的结果，但小瓶的图形语言借鉴了插图手稿中的模型，因此可以看到手稿和印刷品之间的媒介变化。在第三研究领域（c）中，将检查标题图像和小瓶图像的交叉点。该项目以15世纪末至18世纪初的知识、图像和媒体历史为背景，旨在建立一个炼金术图像学及其发展的系统调查。炼金术意象的世界结合了透明和不透明，接近自然和抽象，形成了一个复杂而动态的统一体。关键的问题是，图像是否只是说明了什么已经固定在文本媒介或他们是否可以产生和传达的意义和知识，在很大程度上独立于文本。如果印刷的所有权和船舶图像主要可以从赫尔佐格·奥古斯特·沃尔芬比特尔图书馆获得，则必须检查外部机构的馆藏是否有手写记录。

Two pictorial genres of alchemy are at the centre of the project: (a) At the same time as the printing press was invented, printed alchemical books began to include frontispieces. As programmatic statements of popular appeal, the frontispiece indicates the book’s contents and seeks to rouse interest. (b) The pictorial language of alchemy is concentrated in the telling image of the vial that serves as a convenient stage for the transmutation. In the first field of investigation, the focus is on the outward representation of alchemical knowledge, while in the second the iconic potential of the core area of alchemical theory and practice is explored. While illustrated title pages are usually the result of technical reproductions, the pictorial language of vials draws on models in illuminated manuscripts, so that the media change between manuscript and print can come into view. In a third field of research (c), the intersections of the title image and the vial image will be examined. Set within the parameters of the histories of knowledge, images and media from the end of the 15th to the beginning of the 18th century the project aims at establishing a systematic survey of alchemical iconography and its development. The world of alchemical imagery combines transparency and opacity, closeness to nature and abstraction to form a complex and dynamic unity. The key question is raised as to whether images only illustrate what has already been fixed in the text medium or whether they can generate and convey meaning and knowledge largely independently from the text. If printed title and vessel images can primarily be obtained from sources of the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, the holdings of external institutions must be checked for handwritten records.